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Actions must speak louder than words
The social housing sector has been vocal in its support for the Black Lives Matter movement in recent weeks. But its own record on diversity points to an urgent need for action as well as warm words, writes Martin Hilditch
The support for the Black Lives Matter movement from organisations across the sector in recent weeks is obviously an important statement of solidarity.
But given what we know about the lack of diversity of many boards and executive teams in the sector, hands up if you’ve felt there’s been an elephant in the room in some cases.
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Inside Housing has surveyed the diversity of the sector a number of times in recent years. Last year housing consultancy Altair carried out its analysis of the top 50 associations by stock size in England and found just 7% of board members and 5% of executives were BAME. Inside Housing has often struggled to collect any data at all from many organisations. Conversations with BME National this week confirm that many landlords are barely monitoring their own performance.
For a sector that prides itself, rightfully, on its social purpose, this week it’s been sad to hear stories of BAME staff who have moved to other industries because they felt the glass ceiling was that little bit less solid. What a criminal waste that is.
Also this week, the long-awaited Public Health England report into understanding the impact on BAME communities exposes the potential impact of wider societal structural racism. The report flags that “risks associated with COVID-19 transmission, morbidity, and mortality can be exacerbated by the housing challenges faced by some members of BAME groups”.
Basically, anyone with a passing interest in housing policy won’t be surprised by the contents of the PHE report. Frankly, it could have been written five, 10 or 15 years ago. It does, however, stand as an indictment of the lack of action.
As Tom Murtha put it on Twitter this week: “History tells us that warm words rarely lead to real change.” What we need is action and accountability.
As part of that process, Inside Housing is challenging its own performance too, and acknowledging we need to improve. For starters, we will be setting up a BAME editorial panel to help drive our coverage by providing ideas for stories and research and holding us accountable for progress. We will also be auditing our performance. Other plans include providing a blog platform for the latest cohort of the Leadership 2025 development programme, expanding our survey of board and executive diversity and looking at what has stopped previous sector diversity initiatives achieving all their goals.
Please get in touch if you have any additional ideas or if you are interested in finding out more about the panel.
Black lives matter. But just saying it isn’t enough.
Martin Hilditch, editor, Inside Housing
